Nancy’s Blog

The excellent Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List posted this article from Inside Higher Ed: Double Dipping in Conference Papers — If you are going to give a talk at a scholarly meeting, do you need new material?

The paper is about political science. It reports on a study that found a considerable increase in duplicate presentations — the same title, presented at more than one conference — from zero in 1992.  Whereas faculty said they had been taught as grad students that this was unacceptable, current grad students responded to the question with “blank stares” — no idea that this practice might be controversial.

It gives the arguments pro and con. Pro: papers benefit from discussion and revision; audiences at any one conference presentation may be small. Con: getting credit for multiple scholarly products when it’s really the same one. And it notes that with “the ‘enormous pressure’ to present at scholarly meetings when possible …it is ‘unrealistic and undesirable’ to expect completely new work for each such event.”

It concludes that the solution is to be honest and clear about what you’re doing.

For our field, I think it reflects one more difficulty of multi-disciplinary work: different norms across different fields; the need to present the same research to different, non-overlapping audiences; and the academic credit system, wherein products are counted numerically.

From today’s NY Times: Research found a negative correlation between Czech ornithologists’ beer consumption with their publications and citations.

Of course, maybe this is only ornithologists…or Czechs…but do grad students and untenured faculty want to take this risk?

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, probably the best source of data on Americans’ use of the internet and related technlogies, has released a new report: Mobile Access to Data and Information.

A personal note: I love having internet access on my cellphone. I use it to check email, and to do searches. Often when I’m out and around I check on addresses, business hours, and other information that makes my life easier. I use Google Maps for directions. I’ll even check book reviews while I’m in a bookstore.

I feared that having email on my phone would tether me to email,  but instead it frees me from my computer.  For example, I can recheck details on a meeting while in transit, or check for updates from someone I’m supposed to be meeting.  And I can do email during interstitial time.  It’s too hard to key long notes, but often all I do is delete unnecessary email or key a short reply.

From Pew:

Some 62% of adult Americans have taken advantage of mobile access to digital data and tools. The Pew Internet Project’s new report, entitled Mobile Access to Data and Information, examines mobile access in two ways and finds that:

58% of adult Americans have used a cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) to do at least one of ten mobile non-voice data activities, such as texting, emailing, taking a picture, looking for maps or directions, or recording video.

41% of adult Americans have logged onto the internet on the go, that is, away from home or work either with a wireless laptop connection or a handheld device.

Overall, 62% of adult Americans have either accessed the internet with a wireless connection away from home or work or used a non-voice data application using their cell phone or PDA, according to the Pew Internet Project’s December 2007 survey.

As a former birder, I love the idea of the this project — but I have to point out that birders call it birding, not birdwatching.

Maybe I’ll leave CONE on my monitor at home when I’m gone, to keep the cats entertained.  Tho I’m afraid I’ll come home to find the monitor toppled over, with scratch marks.

Announcing: CONE Sutro Forest: Opening 23 April 2007

The Latest Massively Multiplayer Online Game? Birdwatching.

CONE Sutro Forest allows players to earn points by taking live photos and classifying wild birds. CONE Sutro Forest (CONE-SF) combines a remotely controllable robotic pan-tilt-zoom video camera with live streaming video, image database, and point system.

Conceived by Ken Goldberg, artist and professor of engineering at UC Berkeley, and Dez Song, professor of computer science at Texas A&M, and funded by the National Science Foundation, CONE-SF automatically computes the optimal camera viewpoint that satisfies dozens or hundreds of simultaneous players, including both experts and amateurs. Managing large communities is the specialty of craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who will host the camera from his San Francisco residence overlooking the Sutro Forest. All photos on this page were taken by him.

CONE-SF is free and open to the public. To play, visit: http://cone.berkeley.edu.

[However, my efforts to register are not working -- it registers me, then refused to recognize my pwd; resetting pwd doesn't work, either.]

The Pew Internet and American Life Project announces the release of:

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace

The majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze  of strangers, parents and other adults. While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them
such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles.

A new report, based on a survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project examine how teens, particularly those with profiles online, make decisions about disclosing  or shielding personal information.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles and most of them restrict access to their profile in some way. Of those with profiles, 66% say their profile is not visible to all internet users. Of those whose profile can be accessed by anyone online, nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly.

Here is a link to the complete report:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp

As Ethics Panels Expand Grip, No Field Is Off Limits Link fixed
By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: February 28, 2007

“This system of helter-skelter enforcement, critics say, has no meaningful oversight and no appeal process. Debbie S. Dougherty and Michael W. Kramer, two former members of a review board at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who wanted to study review boards, had to first get their own board’s O.K. Although they thought their project was exempt from board approval, the only entity authorized to make that decision is the board itself, and the only appeal if the researchers had rejected the ruling is also the board. “